Surveillance and monitoring of vehicle parking areas may be useful for a wide variety of applications, such as security, law enforcement, property management, urban planning, and commercial operations. Additionally, the ability to obtain real-time information regarding parking space occupancy may be beneficial to individual vehicle owners in terms of reducing the time and effort needed to locate available parking spaces.
In some instances, however, prior approaches for monitoring parking areas may be less than ideal. For example, prior methods for obtaining information related to parking space occupancy and other parking-related data may rely upon monitoring performed by human employees, thereby increasing personnel and labor costs, as well as reducing the efficiency and speed of data collection. Additionally, prior systems for automated or semi-automated parking surveillance may require the installation of specialized equipment in a specific parking area, thereby limiting the flexibility and applicability of such systems.